A team of scientists led by Vikram Ravi managed to make an observation of one of the brightest radio bursts to date (fast radio bursts (FRB) – mysterious bursts of radio waves that occur outside our Galaxy) called FRB150807.
Despite the fact that astronomers still do not know what events or objects are producing these bursts, the discovery is a kind of another stepping stone for astronomers on the path to understanding diffusions in material that exists in intergalactic space. The results of the new study were described in an article that appeared in the journal Science on November 17.
'Considering that this radio burst was detected billions of light-years away, it could help us study the Universe as far away from us as possible before this event,' Ravi said. 'Almost half of all visible matter is believed to have spread throughout intergalactic space . And although it usually remains inaccessible to telescopes, it is possible to study it using FRB '.
When FRBs travel through outer space, they travel through intergalactic material and distort, like the apparent twinkling of stars. This is because the light from the radio burst is distorted by the Earth's atmosphere. By observing these bursts, astronomers can learn details about the regions of the universe through which the fast radio bursts traveled on their way to Earth.
Scientists have found that FRB 150807 has weak distortion only by material within its galaxy, which indicates that the intergalactic medium in this direction is not saturated and corresponds to the assumption of theorists. This is the first direct understanding of turbulence in the intergalactic environment.
Researchers observed FRB 150807 using the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. The observations matched data from a nearby pulsar, a rotating neutron star that emits radio waves and other electromagnetic radiation in our galaxy.
“With the real-time detection system developed by Swinburne University of Technology, we found that although the FRB is a million times farther than the pulsar, the magnetic fields still look the same in their directions,” said Ryan Shannon, Research Fellow Industrial Research (CSIRO) Astronomy and Space Sciences at Curtin University in Australia and co-author of this study.
The result obtained provides an understanding of magnetism in space between galaxies, and this is an essential step in determining how, in principle, the formation of cosmic magnetic fields occurs.
Sources: Phys
